Jeff Johnson's Blog: Will Fight Evil 4 Food, page 21

Late free short story for July- The Moody Pink Forecast

It was morning again, and Santiago was lounging in the humid cockpit of an enormous foot-colored parade float, emotionally somewhere between nothing and crappy. He’d cannibalized parts of the garage door with a blowtorch and a bottle opener sometime late in the night, so he had a good view of the storm and the flooding street. A car hissed by, throwing standing water. Santiago half hoped it was Sweet Ass Virginia, morning drunk and raged out all the way up into her great big hair, come to promote him from cretin to lunatic. But whoever it was kept going.

Read the rest at greatpinkskeleton.com

Warm thoughts about Skuggy from Deadbomb Bingo Ray

Skuggy is more than just a character from Deadbomb Bingo Ray, Crossroader, Steam In The Marrow, and The Devil On Macon Street. More than just a clock worker, a thug, a man with one withered arm. A long time ago, a version of him actually walked the Earth.

Lushane had a dozen names. He was a small time drug dealer when I met him. This was in 1985. I was a runaway from a foster home in Springfield, Missouri, generally in the market for weed, and Lushane was maybe twenty, wiry and black, with a withered arm he strapped to his chest in a pillow case. His entire family had been gunned down in a Detroit heroin feud gone wrong, right in front of him no less, so Lushane was a little crazy. We all were, I guess. I remember that time fondly, and any of the other survivors likely do too. Lushane was not destined to make it this far, though I have no idea where his final resting place may be. Some wise ass Star Trek bumper sticker mystic has it that you’re only truly dead when the last person who remembers you dies. My shit is in The Library of Congress, so I’m all good. But so are you Lushane. We called you Skuggy. Skug.

Skug’s place was tiny, a one room granny annex on a dumpy little house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was terrified of his lesbian landlady, who forbade him to have visitors of any kind and would sometimes sucker punch him. Dude had to make money somehow, so he had visitors. The construction of that micro underworld was dominated by outsiders. Skug and a bank robber named Travis were the poles. Skuggy got terrible weed from somewhere and broke it down into dime bags. Street kids would buy them at a discount, ten for fifty, and go out and sling to the child idiots at UNM for food money.

“You guys gots ta get the fuck outta here!” Deeply paranoid look to either side. “Get in here.” That’s how Skuggy answered the door. Every time.

The Story Of Skuggy’s Arm

From Deadbomb Bingo Ray-

“Hm. Tell you what. One time, oh, long time ago now. I was fifteen. My uncles were runnin’ horse out of this motel, I used to hang around, go get shit from the corner store. Momma gunned down in the kitchen year before, didn’t have shit to do.” He paused. Ray never talked about the years before they met, and neither did Skuggy. Ever. Ray lit up a second cigarette and listened, watching the snow fall on the dumpster in front of the car.

            “There was this girl worked the corner. Chicky. Sometimes they called her Dulce, but I always rolled with Chicky. My Chicky. Puerto Rican and she had jungle butt, little waist. Blue lipstick, she like that. I had this huge love on that woman, follow her around and I sing songs to her…”

-cue music  Love And Happiness, Al Green

            Ray prepared himself for something horrifying.

            “My uncles got me a piece of that for my birthday. I so excited, gonna fuck on Chicky, like a dream inside a dream inside a dream, jus can’t be real. Big blowout night, tickets to Journey. I used ta love that band. They get me an’ Chicky a room, and she come in an’ she smell so good, Ray, like popcorn and grape candy. We got some blow and some ludes and some crystal, an’ Chicky, she do a few lines and then she do a thing I ain’t seen ‘fore or since. She make a mix, lude an’ crystal, an’ she shoot me up and get suckin’, and right when I gonna pass out, she bring me back up on the crystal, Imma blow, back on down on a poke o’ that lude juice. Up an’ down, up an’ down, an’ I think Imma go crazy baby, hour after hour like a crazy roller coaster in Coney. Damn…”

            Ray was quiet.

            “I’s so in love. I wake up a day later an’ my arm… My arm, it all slick an’ it don’t work right, and my uncles think that so damn funny. Damn. So I just kinda hang back, keep all quiet, and ‘bout a month go by, I get me a sling. Make it from a pillowcase. Chicky, my Chicky, like she don’t even know any kinda skinny little whistlin’ boy wif no funny arm.”

            “Fuck those people,” Ray said eventually, when he realized the story was over.

            “Oh, I did Raymond. I did.”

Skug believed that a Thanksgiving turkey was a pigeon with something deeply wrong with it. He was incredibly good at chess and used beer caps and little wads of toilet paper for some of the pieces. He had an old bong and he would do big hits off cigarette butts he picked up on Central. He was a black dude from Detroit and he loved Journey. And he had a huge smile with all his teeth in it. Unlike Travis, who like many rednecks had trouble keeping the front ones.

Travis, who should live on in infamy as well, was another good guy. A Kentucky native, he’d robbed a bank while drunk and desperate after breaking up with his gal. The robbery netted him a small stack of twenty dollar bills, many of which he dropped on the way out. Travis held on to enough to get a tank and a half of gas and make it across state lines, and then he robbed a gas station so he could keep going. The net at the gas station was over a thousand, but Travis was done with guns, so when the truck broke down, he stayed where it was and became a man of peace- a dime bag weed dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Right now I’m working on a project that takes place in New Mexico, and I can’t help but remember all those people. For whatever crazy reason, in my mind’s eye they’re all smiling, too. If the bumper sticker dude is right, and I doubt it, they’re smiling at me for writing this, smiling that I somehow found a way to sneak a piece of them into a paper vehicle moving through time better than they had.

Rock on dudes.

Rolling Stone Italy Interview w/ Jeff Johnson- Translated

Music is always very important in your stories. Could you tell us about your relationship with music. You are a musician too: who to listen to you? Who are your favorite artists? Do you listen to music while writing? 

Music! Music is life! What a fantastic question to start with. When I was a kid the music in my world was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Credence, that kind of thing. Some Roy Orbison. When I was maybe 14 or 15 I discovered Sonic Youth, Death Valley 69, and it was like a window opening. These days when I’m writing its everything from Tom Waits to Nick Cave. The Bad Seeds is a great thing in this world. Punk is also still a big part of my daily sound diet, always will be. Its like comfort food. And that’s a kind of music that seems to reinvent itself too, or finds new voices in new places. Take Soweto Township in South Africa. The afropunk band TCIYF is blasting out blistering stuff. A thousand years from now, historians won’t look at reruns of CNN or sort through dead advertising rags like The Washington Post to find out what life was like in our time. They’ll look at the lyrics of our music to find some truth.

What do tattoos, the real main character of your books, mean for you?

Ah yes, the big question with a million answers. The overarching truth is that these days, especially in America, there is a constant pressure to conform. Its always been strong, but today its overpowering. As the pressure grows, so does the popularity of tattoos. Today they’re everywhere, and that surely says something. No two tattoos are the same, just like people who wear them and the people who put them on. Some of them may look alike, true, but you see what I mean. Darby, Delia, the gang at the Lucky Supreme in Old Town, even the people of Old Town itself, they never had any intention of joining the herd. That’s a hard life, living on the edge. But its a good one. Individuality is the surprising new wealth. In the end, tattoos probably mean more than most people realize. They’re just one part of a bigger picture. I’m the wrong guy to suggest this, but it may be true that this big picture is the portrait of progress itself. Only an individual can ask themselves the important questions. If we see inequality, cruelty, injustice, an individual can ask what they can do, then do it. A herd can do nothing of the kind. For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. Newton’s Third Law, expressed here in the struggle against homogenization.

When and how did you start with tattoos?

Good question! I was always drawing and reading when I was a kid, so I figured I’d do something along those lines if I was lucky enough to grow up. I don’t fit in for shit, never did, so the tattoo world was a natural thing for me. Its an industry and a culture full of people with a strong sense of personal identity, so a very loose collective instead of a structured, rigid body. Plus, the stories you hear in the tattoo shop are often amazing. When I first started writing I met two writers who lived in Portland in those days, Robert Sheckley and KW Jeter. Robert Sheckley became a good friend, even though he was maybe fifty years older than me, but both Bob and KW thought it would be a shame for me to quit tattooing, just because of the unexpected value of those stories. Think about it. Eight hours a day with different characters, some good, some bad, some strange and some in crisis, and all of them ready to talk while they’re getting tattooed. It’s a gold mine. A big part of why I know so much about crime comes from this, and that has been hugely valuable in writing noir. People say that if you really want to know about the mechanics of the underworld, the how to and the why not, you have to go into the industrial prison system and get your degree on the inside. That’s certainly one way, but in the tattoo world, I get to interview the people who didn’t get caught, the successful ones who got away, sometimes for hours and hours, year after year. I’ve had front row seats at things that are hard to imagine.

You are a veteran tattoo artist: do you still work at tattoos?

I do! I’m pretty busy writing these days, but I do find the time to pick up my machines. One day a week I’m at the infamous Kilroy’s Tattoo here in scenic Portland, telling stories and listening to them, doing the art hustle. The owner Mark Ledford is an old friend of mine, so it’s a win for both of us. I get away from the computer and he gets a wiseguy for one shift a week. It’s fun. I do guest spots abroad, too. Shout out to Dakini Tattoo in Philadelphia! I did an extended guest spot there while I was working on my novel Deadbomb Bingo Ray, which takes place in Philly. That’s a hard city. Best tattoo shop on the East Coast if you ask me.

How could you define your style in tattoos today? And how is it evolved in years?

I go through phases. My ‘licked’ period, where everything looked like wet candy, went on for years. So glad that’s over. Right now I’m just leaving a long period of black and gray, though elements of that will stay with me forever. Next I’m going to tinker more with perspective I think, using the body itself in new ways. We’ll see.

How has your real life and work inspired your books?

Real life and writing, well, back to Robert Sheckley on that one. Bob said to always base your main character on yourself to some degree if you can. Ultimately writers do this anyway, he claimed, so its better to do it with conviction. Put some of you in there if you can and it will ring true. Darby and I have more in common than I’d like to admit. I was a runaway, all that, made my way early into the relative safety of rock-n-roll and the tattoo world. Makes me laugh to even think of it, but both of those worlds are full of my people. The outsiders, just like Darby Holland. I’m not a particularly peaceful man but I’m trying, just like Darby. And I have a serious passion for Mexican food, too. In the end, to be a good writer you have to have an interesting life, and an interesting life is a good one. It’s a positive feedback loop.

When I think about it, it seems like tattooing, the process of doing that kind of art, has also affected the way I write. You have to concentrate for hours and work without making mistakes. That’s helped me as a writer. I’ve often said that even a crappy tattoo artist is a master of creative problem solving, and that helps. One creative discipline informs the next.

Around the tattoo world are there a lot of people looking for a noir?

Oh yes! Artists seem to like stories almost as much as they like pictures, and noir itself is experiencing a rebirth. We live in a noir now, all of us. The creatives were just the first people to realize it. A kind of switch has flipped. Income inequality, gentrification, the crushing message of the media, it all comes together in a way that reinvents noir for us daily. We are those characters now. We live those kinds of stories. This has become The Age Of Noir. Readers, and I mean bright readers, are drawn to noir because of the truth written between the lines. When I say that the historians of tomorrow will look at our song lyrics to understand life in our time, I should include noir. It speaks volumes.

What about Lucky Supreme: who is Darby? How contemporary is he as a character?

The Lucky Supreme, as a tattoo shop, is a dying breed, but also an incredibly hard to kill phenomena. It’s a street shop, which is different from the new hair salon style shops. In a street shop, the place is alive with drama and stories and music and neon. There’s a rich, layered atmosphere. The carnival origins of the tattoo shop are still strong and vibrant. These books reflect that, the sense of being at the very end of a magical ride in American history. Darby is a typical street shop prize fighter. Creative, resourceful, reactive, inventive. Tough, wild, and free. If you try to burn Darby, he will steal your matches.

You spend your life between Oregon and LA. How is Portland? Why is it so suitable for your books?

Portland is suitable because of the rain! It rains all day, every day, and it will never, ever stop. It’s a beautiful place, too. Incredible food scene, great art and music. LA is a fantastic place too, better than ever. I spend more and more time there.

Lansdale used incredible words for your novels. Who are your masters?

Joe Lansdale is an amazing writer. The Bottoms, the Hap and Leonard books, I love all of it. There are so many writers I admire, really. Of course my old friend Robert Sheckley. The Alternative Detective books were so fun, so great. I really dig Kim Stanley Robinson. The late James Crumley was amazing. Dancing Bear is one of my all time favorite books. So many good books out there. I’m a big fan of Warren Ellis! Gun Machine. I mean, man. Tim Hallinan, Sean Doolittle, great guys. Norman Green! Now, there’s a writer.

What about cinema and TV. Rights for your novels are already been acquired. Are we going to see your operas soon on a screen?

Hollywood! I’ve had an amazing time there, and its getting more and more interesting. I wrote a short film, The Kinjiku, based on one of my stories, and that goes into production in Fall, starring Ron Canada and Tom Hildreth. Great guys and we’ll be working on many other things after that. Recently I’ve been going back and forth with the Nelms Brothers, Ian and Eshom, two of the brightest, most genuine people I’ve ever met in Hollywood. Their new movie Small Town Crime is fabulous. My agent and I have been in negotiations with all kinds of great people about a variety of things, and a few really lucrative and delightful deals have already closed, but I can’t talk about that right now.

Most of the writers I know don’t want to have anything to do with Hollywood. It’s too harsh and scummy and empty. Maybe the tattoo world inoculated me, I dunno, but after my first few really terrible encounters with directors and producers, and I mean, really, really bad ones, I became extremely careful, but I didn’t fold. And its paying off. I love movies, and the golden age of television might be right in front of us if enough of the people who want to make brave, beautiful, wondrous things can get together and overpower the financial dinosaurs and bottom feeders who make formula baby food. You can see the first signs of it. Season one of True Detective is a great example of what I’m talking about. The long story, unfolding in a very cinematic way, with rich storytelling content. And it made it all the way to the bank. Proof of concept. So, we’ll see. Fingers crossed. I’m trying to be a part of that. I’d love to be a part of that.

http://www.rollingstone.it/cultura/libri-strisce/parla-il-nuovo-re-del-crime-americano-jeff-johnson-oggi-la-vita-e-un-noir/2018-02-16/

 

Pueblo Posole!

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There it is, red hot from the pages of Lucky Number Zero, book four in the Darby Holland Crime Series. The New Mexico Red Chili Posole with the fabled Smoked Navajo Corn called Chicos. I recently made this three nights in a row for a succession of dinner parties in Los Angeles. My stellar agent Lane Heymont and I had a ton of cool shit to do there, and a great deal of it could be made way more fun if we made it social. We did, and together with my sweet gal, the artist Sylvia Mann, we enjoyed the stellar company of a constellation of magnificent and talented people.

This posole is the brainchild of Mike Martinez, badass Portland chef and the longtime bassist in most of my attempts to tear a black hole in space with a guitar. We first met in Albuquerque, and invaded the Pacific Northwest in the late 80’s and became brothers of sonic fury. The dude appears in almost all of my books in one form or another, most recently in Grand Estuary Grand as the one-eyed sheriff Doctor Rubio Martinez. He appears again in this very different form at Hollywood dinner parties. These are magical times.

PUEBLO POSOLE

Take 4 pounds, give or take, of beef, something slightly fatty like a roast, and rub it with salt, pepper, cumin and cinnamon.

Heat a big pot. Drop in a tablespoon of cumin seeds and toast them, then add oil and brown the beef on both sides. Once brown, remove the beef and-

Add a julienned white onion, garlic, six New Mexico Red Chilies (stemmed and deseeded, chopped rough) and cook, stirring often.

Deglaze pan with bourbon, put the beef back in, and add beef stock (make your own, isn’t hard) until the beef is covered. Add 1 cup of CHICOS. Lower heat to the bare fuckin’ minimum and lid.

Four hours later, remove beef and shred with forks, take the big chunks of fat out and toss them, and put the shredded beef back.

Add two cups of green chilies.

Cook 20 more minutes. Salt to taste.

Serve with finely sliced red cabbage (add a little lime and salt), optional radish, and Ancho Garlic Sauce-

ANCHO GARLIC SAUCE

Super easy! Stem and deseed six or seven dried anchos, drop in a pot with five or six cloves of garlic and a few fingers of water and steam them, 5-10 min. Blend, salt to taste.

Thanks to all who came out to Silverlake! We’ll see all of you again very soon! I’m kicking ass in fuckin’ film school all fuckin’ summer, so September. And special thanks to cool guy Lane, always so fun rollin’ around LA. Dudeboy is from New York and did not bitch once about these days and days of New Mexican food. Rock on homie! And for everyone else, no matter where in the world you are, give this a try. Use hominy if you can’t get Chicos. Invite friends. Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

The Day Anthony Bourdain Died

The Day Anthony Bourdain Died

            -I woke up and did what I do every other morning. Make coffee and get dressed while it’s brewing, then pour a cup, get my phone and my cigarettes, ride the elevator downstairs. Then smoke in front of the French bakery and look at the science news on Phys.org. This is key to one element in the high speed criminal burn I’m running on Hollywood. But first, I check my email.

Anthony Bourdain is dead. Quick scan of the news. Suicide.

Lightning hit me in the back of the throat. Everything I was doing at that moment was because of him. All of it. Somehow, that guy had become a part of my life in a unique way. His first book, Kitchen Confidential, inspired me to write my first book, Tattoo Machine. Bone In The Throat and Gone Bamboo (Gone Bamboo is a fantastic read) inspired me to write the Darby Holland Crime Series. I learned from his lessons in Hollywood. Measure twice, shoot three times. More than publishing, itself transformed by bean counters into legitimized robbery, Hollywood is downright rapey when it comes to wordsmiths. Take the bait, steal the trap. That was his bold lesson.

Bourdain was one of our primary rebels. He penetrated deep into the herd, and he changed them because of it. He brought a whiff of Paris to Kentucky, the rains of Cambodia to Illinois, the winds of China to Missouri. In the Zombie Apocalypse, he was to be one of our generals. And I would have followed him. I know I would have, because I already did. I just never realized it until this morning.

He left the restaurant industry, but that was where his friends old and new were. He found other writers to be moody, clickish, pretentious bummers. They are. I left tattooing, but they’re still my people, and like him, if I run into a problem, I sure as fuck am not calling another writer. I’m calling one of the hard, clever people I can trust.

How many friends of mine once looked at their food job as the sad fate of cretins and then reexamined it? Made it better. Made it art. Dozens, and all because of that dude. He touched the tattoo world in the same way. He touched all the micro worlds. Even if you never knew his name, one of your people did, and that person inspired you.

I still get emails and letters and Facebook messages about Tattoo Machine, and how it put the chaos into perspective, how it affirmed whimsy as an iron defence mechanism, how it quantified The Fear. All you Trojans, you Pussy Eating Swamp Panthers, you go out and read that book’s better, wiser father. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain.

New Free Short Story of The Month! THE GOLD KING, at GreatPinkSkeleton.com

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I wrote this frosty tear about a gambler in exile in Nebraska one nuclear summer at a taco stand. Romero has a price on his head. Hiding at the Banfield Motel on the Interstate and working as the night clerk in the middle of winter, Romero believes his luck has bottomed out. Then a man in a gray sedan pulls into the parking lot. This is from The Munez Stories, available on Amazon.

A Fast Will For Writers

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You hear things sometimes that make you think about the unthinkable. Recently a writer I’m pen pals with sent along a harrowing account of a fellow author who passed away unexpectedly. His estranged sister wound up with his intellectual property and derailed his legacy. Straight to the dumpster. This happens. Impossible as it is to believe.

This weighed on me. Now, many, many people have repeatedly insinuated, and even forcefully declared, that I am in grave need of protection in this regard. It seems important for the first time, too. This is the year that I’ve finally crossed an invisible line and generated a large body of material worth protecting. Other people are involved now, with more coming on board all the time, and they all know my story. So! Here is a link to a great PDF generated by none other than Neil Gaiman, who is on a crusade to protect authors from troubled backgrounds. I’ve just done mine. All of my writing, art, music, every last bit of my intellectual property, in case you’re wondering, goes to my sweetheart Sylvia Mann in the event of my untimely demise. Nicest gal in the world, loves everyone, heart of gold, seriously smart, extremely wise. The worlds I’ve created are safe, as are the people who work there and dream alongside me, and I tell you what! I feel lighter. Cleaner. Free. You might, too. Do it, fellow creatives. It’s one less thing to worry about.

Type this document, date it, and then sign it in front of at least two witnesses (I used three and included their addresses) who are not family or named in the Will, and then have the witnesses sign in front of you and the other witnesses. It makes for a strange kind of party! Then, send a copy to your agent and make sure they read it and file it. He or she might make a fine executor, but discuss it first. Make sure this document isn’t a secret, too. Do like I’ve just done, and blog the news of it, for instance.

Good luck!

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/SIMPLEWILL.pdf

 

Mother’s Day Thoughts From The Outer Ring

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I am made from bad ingredients.

Admit it. We’ve all felt this way, at least once. No matter who you are, there was a time when you looked at one of your parents and thought, “Oh holy shit. That- that- that weird fucking mutant is one of the components in my design ancestry.” It’s Mother’s Day, so it’s time to either fake it and send flowers, admit to a neutral ambivalence and limp along with the program, go dark and get wasted, or, if you’re lucky, get in there and give that old lady a hug for a job well done.

Those are the time honored options. Mine is a work in progress. Why? It’s pointless and weensy of you, dear reader, to be bitter on such a day. Look at what she did for you! First, she had the wherewithal to carry you around inside her body for around NINE months. What a drag! Better than I am already! Then, even if you we grunted out behind a dumpster and left for dead, a different mother found you! And somehow, you even learned to read! Was a maternal person ever involved in that? I bet there was.

So here it is my admittedly granola take on Mother’s Day. No matter what kind of ungodly hog splatter your mother was, you can and should rejoice on some level. Let’s take mine. Sandra’s childhood was… I don’t care how it was, actually. Her real dad was gunned down in a bar by a gangster’s daughter, and the mobbed up little vixen got away with it. So she was off to a rocky start. I guess that was kinda interesting. Her mother remarried, and they became the better set of my grandparents. So my mother didn’t imprint on me to the point where I ever learned her birthday, or even where she was born, and if I ever learned anything else about her early life, I forgot it. Sandra started adulthood as a Jackie Kennedy wannabe, I can gather from photos. She was a pill head, like many of her generation. The pharmaceutical industry was relentless in those days, and it still is, but Google drug ads aimed at women in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. I mean, what the fuck? As her peers became her betters, she slandered them relentlessly. It was impossible for her to rejoice in the success of others. But whatever. What really mattered?

She was sweet sometimes. She thought reading was good (reading kids are quiet kids), and she never had any terrible boyfriends. She believed that the imagination was a powerful tool. And she could be super fucking funny, too. Best of all, she was capable of misbehaving on an epic level.

The understanding that there are things you can take away from bad parents is a hard one to come to, because the apple seldom falls from the tree for humans. Mammals emulate the behavior of their parents. For better or for worse, their ingredients are our building blocks. The trick, therefore, is to manipulate your ingredient list. Find the good things and be those things. Build on them. Feed them. Identify the bad ones and starve them out. We all have those old friends who seemed to pick up everyone’s bad habits and but never their good ones. This same function is wildly more important in dysfunctional families. No one is all bad. If you’re wise, you’ll look for the good in there. If you’re clever, you might be able to find it. If you’re smart, you should try to become it.

That was a mix of hippy and Dr. Phil, far outside of my comfort zone. It’s all true stuff, too, but I feel, Dear Reader, that you might go away disappointed after the above, so I’ll offer up an embarrassing story that has little or nothing to do with any of that.

Years would pass where I could think of no Earthly reason to bug my mother. But one night, me and a couple guys I knew decided to hit every bar on Lombard. Creepy part of town really, especially in those days. We started at Tiny Bubbles and just kept on going. Around 3:00 we wound up back at my place after my Tres got us kicked out of the last three consecutive bars.

“Dudes!” Tres cried out. “I just realized! It’s April Fools Day! We’re three hours into it!”

“Who can we call,” my old pal Ben asked. They couldn’t think of even one person who would believe a fucking thing they would say at three in the morning right then. But I could, so I found her number and dialed. My mother was living with another old lady named Candy at the time.

“Wha, wha- hello?” Sleeping pills. Only half there.

“Ma! Wake the fuck up! It’s me! Jeff!”

“Jeffrey? What in the world-“

“Pack all your stuff and get out of the house! Fast! In fact just leave everything! Get in your car and drive away from the lights!”

“Wha- what,” rustle as she sat up, suddenly awake.

“Jesus! I can’t believe it! It’s France! They dropped a nuke on New York City!”

The phone dropped, then in the distance-

“Candy! Candy! Wake up old girl! We’re at war with France!” Then a pause. Then a mad cackling as she realized what she’d just said.

 

 

New Free Short Story Of The Month- Jimson’s Universe (one of my first published, from back when I was cool) www.GreatPinkSkeleton.com

 

[image error]Head over to my website http://www.GreatPinkSkeleton.com and check it out. It comes with a fun story on rejection and acceptance. And whimsy.

My introduction to The Micro Novels of Tory Seller

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What is a micro novel, you ask? A poem? Another exercise in avante garde dipshittery?

nov·el1

ˈnävəl/

noun

a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

So a micro novel would be what?? Let’s turn to another word before we begin the exploration.

ko·an

ˈkōän/

noun

a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

Bob Seager, Zen Buddhism, The Easter Bunny, well, we’re still lost. Let’s take a look at the mind behind the micro novel. Without further adieu, let’s descend into an introduction to the enigmatic Tory Seller himself.

I met Tory in San Francisco a few years ago. I’d been invited down for an all expenses paid writing gig. A script was coming together for HBO about a hippy commune, and while it wasn’t exactly my genre, it was close enough. Tory was one of the other writers, a bearded, quiet, very stoned guy, but friendly enough. We got to work.

By day two it became apparent that this was not, in fact, an all expenses paid gig, nor was it going to HBO. Unfortunately, this coincided with other bad news. My agent at the time was an absolute cretin. He lost my new novel, and I had to use Tory’s computer to rescue a copy from my sent email. I then had to use his computer to finish it a second time. The novel was Deadbomb Bingo Ray. I did this in Tory’s car as we rolled around late night San Francisco, working night after night in the halo of weed he surrounded himself with. He waxed on and on about the local hookers, parakeets, experimental music, Australia, glue, what have you, and we became friends. My then agent went on to misplace the publisher’s contract, so I was stranded for another week. It was then, while we were living off Tory’s food stamps and sleeping on couches in the lobby of a recording studio, that I was first introduced to the micro novel.

Each segment was crafted, and not in a pedantic, fussy way. Tory was not operating in the quiet of his home at night after he’d worked all day in a bookstore or an office. This was not engineered in a cafe workshop or his mother’s basement either. He was in motion, a strange hybrid of outlaw and surfer, with a generous helping of The Dude in his character profile. The snips, the condensed microsities, had been streamlined in a Beat fashion, shorn of verbiage, adjectives, dead weight, live action, conjecture, structure, all of it. They were encapsulations distilled by momentum, sculpted by roads, delivered through spiritual digestion.

Another week passed while my agent fumbled the money for the novel. I was stranded for one more week before I finally bypassed him. In that week, I watched Tory create, and I’m glad I did. It was an amazingly involved process, and unique in my experience. A novelist sits. Thinks. Writes for hours. Repeats. A micro novelist does something very different.

Creating the micro novel, any of them, involved driving. Tory talks to himself, even when you’re in the car with him. He stops and stares at things. He writes on napkins. He takes notes on his phone. The micro novel is alive because of it.

Read these in the car. Read them on the toilet. Read them on a train. Mutter the words under your breath as you do, and consider them from various angles. Memorize your favorites and repeat them to people at awkward times. Leave your copy at the airport when you’re done, or give it to your boss for Christmas. Because that’s what this is. It’s a gift from a stranger to a stranger. Quickly now! Turn to the next page and-

Jeff Johnson

Portland, Oregon 2018